


Habits

by Kiertorata



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asexual Character, Chronic Illness, F/F, Fanart, Pansexual Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 19:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18923644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiertorata/pseuds/Kiertorata
Summary: Two homes. The thrilling and the cosy of life together. Drabbles and art.





	1. Padma & Hermione

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evening12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evening12/gifts).



> Dear [Evening12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening12), I went 100% in on your prompt 'domestic bliss'. No plot, just a bunch of drabbles of the lives of some of your favorite couples. I had a great time creating them, and I hope you enjoy them. <3
> 
> Thanks to L for the beta read and the support!

**1\. Mornings**

Padma’s usual day starts with a cup of her favorite strong coffee and some lightly-buttered toast. She sits across Hermione; they read different papers but keep each other up to date on the nuances of both. Hermione has been determined not to rely on a single news source since the numerous fiascos with the _Prophet_ , and Padma has followed suite, never having been as political as her girlfriend but learning to be more so every day.

Hermione is more of a morning person than Padma is, so she clears up breakfast things while Padma skips past the sports section and to the magically animated comics that always seem to be reprints from childhood. She catches up on the adventures of Wimpy Warlock and the Boggart while the kitchen gets cleaned in an effortless bustle of dishes whizzing from sink to towel to cabinet.

When Hermione has to leave for work, Padma gets up and kisses her, enclosing herself in the scent of freshly laundered robes and a lingering sleepiness.

Padma’s job at the library starts at ten and she has an hour to spend engrossed in her studies. She reads half of a chapter of _Advanced Computational Charms_ and lets herself get distracted by a challenging proof to the Orpington Theorem before hurriedly gathering her things and running out the door.

**2\. Depth**

With her energy of lightness and encouragement, Hermione has filled her life with an ease Padma never thought she could feel with another person. She had thought she would never be comfortable dating let alone sharing her space so intimately with someone.

Their love story is a simple one, but Padma was never a romantic. She wanted practical things and comfortable things. A mutually supportive partnership in which to chase after respective intellectual pursuits. Visits to old bookshops together. Walks in parks. Slow mornings in bed. Coffee.

Simplicity with depth.

Her life has all that and a number of things she couldn’t have factored in.

There’s running in various fundraisers that she dutifully goes to even though she doesn’t enjoy crowds. Hermione never minds that she spends the whole event huddled in a corner with a book or helping out behind the scenes.

There’s the job she would never had applied to if it wasn’t for Hermione’s encouragement, because she doesn’t like customer service. (Turns out, working with customers who also love books isn’t so bad.)

And there’s the way she’s been emboldened to let her carefully built walls come down and allowed her core to be shaken in a way that was completely outside the scope of her imagination.

Hermione can stir up a new thought in her that will make her shiver all over, like the feeling of heat from a crackling fire after stepping in from a biting cold. In moments of heated discussion Padma feels with pervasive clarity just how remarkable it is to have a connection with a mind like Hermione’s. With words they pierce deeper into the works of each other’s psyches than where their physical dimensions could take them. It is what sex must feel like for most people, except Padma thinks with shameless bias that what she and Hermione share must be more intimate.

**3\. Moving In**

They met during Arithmancy studies that Hermione soon gave up for her love for social justice. Study dates had extended into a passionate friendship, dates into invitations home, visits into sleepovers.

And with a linear predictability that Padma liked, Hermione had started moving in. Her books and papers had come first before many of the more practical items, gathering into respectful piles in places where they were unobtrusive.

Padma remembers the momentous feeling she had had when she had placed an extra glass in the bathroom cupboard and waited, heart-fluttering, for Hermione to notice. The next time Hermione had been over, a toothbrush had appeared.

The cat had come last, a part Padma had not looked forward to. The cat didn’t like her even though he was good at pretending he was indifferent in front of Hermione. Wolf was named after Virginia Woolf, but reminded Padma enough of the real animal to make her keep a safe distance whenever her girlfriend wasn’t around to shield her.

She had never been comfortable around animals, not that she was comfortable around most things. Maybe, in a way she resented the cat because there was something similar about them. They were both interpreted as prickly and cool by people who didn’t know them. They both disliked most people but liked Hermione very, very much.

**4\. Nights**

There’s still a thrill of new routines. Sometimes a misplaced book or hairbrush or the sight of Hermione’s clothes on the back of a chair will surprise her with a jolt of acute happiness, so foreign to her that it almost hurts.

There’s an excitement in figuring out their own ways of dealing with things. They like negotiation; Hermione has a repertoire of techniques she’s learned up her sleeve and when they quarrel, they come up with a plan for what to try next time if the same situation occurs. Padma likes that. Hermione never expects her to be perfect and to know the right way to respond.

She knows being with Hermione has made her more open. More caring.

At nights they used to read their separate books, but recently they’ve fallen into the habit of reading together. Hermione’s talent with enlargement charms has come in handy with their mountains of books and papers. If not for them, their home would be like a library with a bed, but now everything is tucked away neatly, categorized and alphabetized lovingly into shrunken shelves, from which Padma often picks out a well-worn book for the night.

Sometimes they read the _Quibbler_ Luna sends all her friends for free and snicker at the articles, each more ludicrous than the last. More often, they read one of the many works of fiction Padma hauls home every day after work. She has found her love of fiction again – she’s slowly started to let go of the idea that every spare moment must be put to sensible use.

It’s more of a rule than an exception that Hermione dozes off; she works too hard at her numerous nonprofit organizations and her studies to which she would never bring less than her best self. A few pages in Padma begins to hear a small snoring against her shoulder, and she smiles to herself. She reads on for a few more pages, not minding that the words lose their meaning when she is distracted by swell of happiness in her stomach.

 

  
  



	2. Lavender & Parvati

**1\. A New Life**

The house they’ve rented is a small cottage on the outskirts of Cornwall, with wood-framed windows, dusty despite endless cleaning spells. The place used to be Muggle, but it’s been inhabited by magical folk long enough to have a special energy.

A died out garden lies beneath the window sill, waiting for new hands to bring it to life. Dry brambles pierce her clothes whenever Lavender does decide to work on it and she usually retreats, cursing. The initial vigour she had when they first moved in is gone now anyways. She works an outdoor job and gets plenty of digging, turning and planting in her day.

Her work takes only a few hours a day, and when she’s not at work, she wanders around the village putting her excess social energy into being friendly with the neighbors, who are a tough nut to crack but are slowly yielding under Lavender’s unwavering smiles and knack for baking.

Her days are short, Parvati’s are long. It doesn’t matter. Things aren’t perfect but they are good, and sometimes that’s more than enough. They still daydream about a flat in London sometimes – smart, chic and stylish – but they both know they are happier here. She thinks they both secretly wish the house was for sale, even though Parvati likes to complain about the Floo trips.

Living like this forever – it’s a freeing thought.

**2\. Healing**

When they still lived in the city, Lavender worked for some months in a nearby Muggle cafe. Not having to talk about the war had been important to her at the time, and glamour charms had been easy to keep up all day in a Muggle environment with no disruptive energies.

She had learned to ask the right questions about current TV shows, learned the secrets of the Muggle coffee machine, and learned to consider her work mates friends.

But despite the benefit of social bustle and routines, she had started to feel unwell after a couple of months. It had been subtle like a ghost; her Healer and her Mind Healer had both been unable to tell her what was wrong with her and it had taken several periods of sick leave for her to admit that the finely balanced doses of Calming Draught she had been self-administering weren’t doing good for her and she had to listen to her body.

It’s still something she’s getting used to. Her scars ache, and sometimes she feels a gnawing ache inside that the Healers can’t explain. She eats her meat rare and animals don’t like her, except dogs that seem unable to leave her alone. She can’t socialize as much as she desires; spending hours on end indoors fills her with a restless desire to run outside.

Initially frustrating and occasionally paralyzing to learn the limitations of her body, she’s learning to find peace with it.

Living in the country helps. Her two skills – making coffee with Muggle devices and talking to people – aren’t much use far in the fields of the countryside, but she has gotten a job helping out in the nearby Magical reservoir and it’s doing a world of good for her. She’s an expert at weeding and isn’t half-bad with weather spells and she knows more about garden tools than she ever thought she would.

She was never outdoorsy, but she now feels like she understands not only the outdoors but her own nature better. She’s better at listening – at least a little, and better at accepting – Parvati has helped a lot with that. Her body undergoes its own cycles as the moon and the stars wander across the sky, and she’s more in tune with it all than ever, she thinks.

**3\. Treasures**

Each morning she reads their cards while the soft fumes of their morning tea draw them into a cosy scene of domestic mysticism.

Lavender loves how the things in their home speak to her; whispered messages of daily, insignificant proportions.

There’s a mixture of old and new; Lavender collects tea cups with chipped gold rims from nearby charity shops and Parvati brings home treats from the divination shop on the way home from her job at the advertising agency. Scattered relics of their special blend of love.

There’s dried flowers picked on her daily walks, and stones and crystals resting on the windowsill, quietly broadcasting their shielding energies. Numerous shawls and blankets ready to be picked up and wrapped around Parvati who is perpetually cold in the cottage. Parvati leaves her half-drunk cups of tea around the house and Lavender picks them up with annoyance layered in affection.

For Parvati’s twentieth birthday, she got Padma and Hermione to help her install a bathtub into the bathroom enlarged with spells.

It’s antique and beautiful, soft-rose porcelain with curved, ornamental legs. Exactly the combination of old and superfluous that Lavender shamelessly loves and knows Parvati does too. Found in one of the many Muggle charity shops nearby, she had to ask a farmer to bring it over in the back of his pickup truck, not seeing a way to magically transport it without seeming suspicious.

They spend dreamy Sundays submerged in bubbles, reborn through the power of hot water infused with geranium oil and rose petals.

Silliness is still at the heart of their relationship: they laugh at the way Parvati’s feet hit Lavender’s like ice cubes under the covers, and how Padma’s letters are formal as ever.

**4\. Rituals**

It’s rumoured that the nearby hills are fairy grounds. There’s a tree that even Muggles leave their yarn and ribbons and plastic toys on as gifts, and diligently at least once a week Lavender makes her way up the hill to leave her offering, sometimes fresh flowers, other times leftover bread for the birds.

If she gets a bad card in her morning reading, she’ll leave something extra special: cake, or fresh bread.

She feels no need to explain it; these little rituals feel natural and right, just like the rest of it all. Praying over a baking pan as she’s stirring, or whispering a word of greeting to a nice-looking flower on the way to work. A single cosmos flower has appeared in front of their house, and every time she passes their garden she takes it as a good sign.

She daydreams of children, knowing well that it’ll be a few years until it’s plausible for them to really think of it. She doesn’t know which she likes more: the thought of carrying a baby herself or watching Parvati swell with life that is theirs to nurture. Maybe both, but that’ll require savings she and Parvati don’t have at the moment.

**5\. Love**

Each night they melt into their ritual of lovemaking, the red-hot blazing, piercing connection of two souls crushing together.

If they had realized this back at Hogwarts, they probably would have done little anything else. In a way Lavender is glad it took them all those years to realize the levels their connection could reach. The relationships she had before – the innocent and inevitable trainwreck with Ron, the flirtation with Anthony during year seven, the short but sweet affair with a Muggle boy from the cafe – taught her a lot, and she thinks she needed to experience all that.

But Parvati and her saved the best for each other: the steadfast, the soft, the holy. It’s not loving a woman, as opposed to a man, Lavender thinks. It’s loving a person, wholly, to the core.

The rusty bed squeaks beneath the weight of their lovemaking, rising to rival the relentless creaking of the nightjar outside their window. Soon their moans drown out any outside existence and they forget the competition.

They come for the first time closely after one another in torrents of trembling freedom. Breaths calmed down, pulse settling, they usually go for another round soon afterwards. Lazier, with sweaty kisses on skin, and laughter.

From the bed Lavender looks outside, where the last pink of the summer night disappears to be replaced by a dull blue-grey as if chased by the mist crawling up their window. She holds Parvati close and strokes her hair pensively.

‘Would we have gotten where we are now if the war hadn’t happened?’

‘We’d be happy somewhere else,’ Parvati states.


End file.
